


Conditional Acceptance

by yet_intrepid



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Keith (Voltron) is Stubborn, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Nerd Matt Holt, Nerd Shiro, Pidge Learned Hacking Skills from Matt, Pre-Canon, Sam Holt is a Good Dad to Everyone, Tutoring, Unnecessary Worldbuilding that Mostly Revolves Around School Administration Policies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 20:11:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8547514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: Shiro's looking for a job. Keith, new to the Garrison, needs a tutor to be allowed to stay. He also needs a lot of other things - a decent meal plan, for one, but more importantly, a friend.





	

Shiro waits in a chair outside Iverson’s office, bouncing his leg nervously. He’s not sure why he’s been summoned—he’s doing well in the class, and he’s pretty sure he hasn’t caused any trouble.

He checks the time on the clock that hangs on the opposite wall. Iverson had said to come in at four o’clock, and it’s 3:59 now. Shiro takes a deep breath, gets himself up, puts on his backpack, and knocks on the door.

“What?” demands Iverson, from inside. Shiro eases the door open.

“You asked to see me, Commander,” he hedges. “Four o’clock, right?”

“Oh, right, Shirogane.” Iverson beckons him in. “Have a seat.”

Shiro perches on the chair by the door; Iverson spins around from the desk to face him. “So, heard you’re looking for a job on campus.”

“Yes sir,” Shiro says.

“You know we don’t hire TAs who are first years and second years.”

“Yes sir,” Shiro says. His heart sinks. Did Iverson call him in to tell him there was no way he could get a job?

“But,” Iverson goes on, “we’ve got a bit of an unusual case on our hands. No, not a TAship,” he says, as Shiro looks up hopefully. “But there’s one particular student—he’s been conditionally accepted starting spring semester.”

“Conditionally accepted as a TA?” Shiro asks.

“No, no,” says Iverson. “Conditionally accepted to the school. He’s got failing grades in English, but his simulator scores were off the charts, so they let him in. But to stay, he’ll have to complete a private study to make up for those Fs. And our faculty, well, we aren’t here to teach you cadets how to write essays.”

“No sir,” Shiro agrees automatically. “So he—needs a tutor?”

“Tutor, that’s it. You had good scores coming in, you write a decent paper, what do you think? We’d give you the curriculum. It’d be five contact hours a week and then you’d get paid for two hours of prep and grading. Same rate as the TAs.”

Shiro nods, considering. “And you said it’d start in the spring.”

“Right. Just a one-semester gig, but by the end of it you’ll be going into your third year and can go for a proper TA job.”

“Okay,” Shiro says. “I’ll do it.” It’s the best chance he’s got, really. He hates taking money from his family—they’re paying for him to travel home over winter break, but with this he could probably cover summer break travel himself.

Iverson nods. “I’ll let the principal know. You’ll need to meet with him, get the materials. Any other questions, Shirogane?”

“What’s his name?” Shiro asks. “The student I’ll be working with.”

Iverson pulls a face. “Not sure,” he says, shuffling through some papers. Finally he locates one, tosses it to Shiro. It’s a copy of the conditional acceptance letter, addressed to Keith Kogane.

\----

Keith is late.

Shiro, sitting in the closet-sized office he’s been allocated for tutoring sessions, tries not to worry. He’s read Keith’s file and knows there’s a history of being absent from school, but he can’t wrap his mind around skipping a class the first day. Especially at the Garrison. _Especially_ when you’re the only student in it.

Five minutes creep past. Ten. Shiro wonders if he should start searching, or maybe comm a professor. But before he can make up his mind, there’s a knock at the half-open door.

Shiro gets up. His palms are sweating as he pulls the door all the way open. Oh God, he has a _student_.

“Mr. Shirogane?” the kid says.

Shiro nods. “Just Shiro’s fine. You’re Keith, right?”

Keith nods, his barely-too-long black hair sweeping over his eyes. Shiro looks him over—he’s slight, almost skinny, and he’s got his hands in his pockets. His eyes scan the office, assessing.

“Good to meet you, Keith,” Shiro says. “Come on in.”

“I don’t know how much they’ve told you,” he goes on, as they settle into chairs on opposite sides of the desk. “But I’m Shiro, I’m a second-year student on the piloting track, and it’s my job to help you with your reading and writing skills.” He pauses, giving Keith a chance to respond, but there’s just silence. Shiro swallows. “Uh, you’re piloting track too, right?”

“Yeah,” says Keith. For the first time, there’s some spark of interest in his eyes, but it’s barely there, layered with a wariness that Shiro finds uncomfortably familiar. “Yeah, I am.”

Shiro smiles at him. “I heard you got some pretty impressive scores in the simulator during your entrance exam.”

Keith nods. “They wouldn’t have let me in, otherwise. I—I don’t make good grades.”

“That’s okay,” Shiro tells him. “That’s what I’m here to help with. Besides, they gave me your transcript, and your grades for math and science weren’t bad at all. Weren’t you in honors math?”

Keith nods again, tentatively. “But I’m really bad at English.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Shiro says again. “They gave me a curriculum and a syllabus that cover everything you’ll need to know to pass the competency test at the end of the semester.” He slides a book across the desk. “This copy’s yours.”

Keith doesn’t take it. “How much is it?”

“Sorry?”

“The book. How much does it cost?”

Shiro blinks. “Nothing, so far as I know. The Garrison is funded by the governments of seventeen different countries; materials are free.”

“Oh,” says Keith. “So for my other classes—”

“You just go to the bookstore and show them your registration list.”

“Oh,” Keith says again.

Shiro hesitates. He can’t know for sure, of course, but something tells him that Keith might be struggling with more than just English classes. The absences from school, the irregular grades, the guarded look, the lack of preparation for basic things like getting his textbooks, the concern about money—well, it’s close enough to Shiro’s own life that he can call it when he sees it.

“So Keith,” he says, “before we get into the class material, I want to see exactly where you’re at and what you already know. I don’t want to waste your time reviewing things you’ve got down, but I also don’t want to jump into things you don’t feel like you’re ready for, okay? So we’ve got about thirty more minutes, and I’d like you to take that time to write. I’m not going to grade it or anything, I just want to see for myself what your writing is like. Okay?”

Keith looks wary again, but he nods. “Okay.”

“Good.” Shiro smiles at him. “I’d like you to write some things about yourself. Maybe why you want to be a pilot, or what your English classes before were like. —I’m going to do some writing, too,” he adds impulsively; he has homework already, and he doesn’t want to just sit and stare at Keith for thirty minutes. That would make anybody nervous, and Keith definitely doesn’t need to be pushed further in that direction.

“Okay,” Keith says again. He reaches for his backpack and pulls out a notebook, then digs around for a minute. “Uh, sir?”

“Shiro,” Shiro corrects. “What is it?”

“I don’t have a pen.”

Shiro hands him one, and the closet-sized office goes silent as Keith bends over the notebook on his lap, frowning. Shiro pulls out his own assignment and tries to focus, but his mind is swirling. This is a much, much bigger job than he thought it would be.

\----

_My name is Keith Kogane and I’m 14. Before this I went to Garrick F Swisson middle school in minesotta. It’s cold there. I took honors math, I like math. I also like flying and that’s why I want to be a pilot, that’s why I came here._

_I don’t like writting. Because it’s hard. My teachers got angry with me a lot because I was dumb in their classes. My foster mom didnt like it either. Some times I had to go to the principle. I failed English last year, And so I got held back. Mr Neera didn’t want me in his class again so I bet he’s glad I came here instead._

Shiro, sitting at the desk in his dorm room, bites his lip. Keith’s handwriting isn’t hard to read, thankfully, but it looks like it belongs to someone much younger than fourteen. The flow of ideas isn’t very clear, either, and every sentence just confirms Shiro’s suspicions.

_Im bad at English but I want to get better so I can stay at the Garrison and be a pilot. Some times I didn’t always work hard in my homework for Mr Neera but I am going to try harder. Also it’s easier at the Garrison because you can’t miss the bus and be late and get in trouble for it._

That’s the end. Shiro looks up, rubbing his temples. He doesn’t know how to help this kid; he’s never taught English to anyone before. He was good at it in school, sure, but that doesn’t mean he knows how to make someone else get better at it. And besides that, Keith needs so much more than just a tutor. He needs a friend. He needs a _parent_.

Shiro swallows, because he’s pretty sure he knows how Keith feels. Although Shiro did well in school before the Garrison, it wasn’t always thanks to a stable home life, and the utter loneliness he can sense in Keith’s matter-of-fact description sinks into him, a familiar weight.

The door bursts open, then, and his roommate Matt swings around behind him to plop down on Shiro’s bed. “Homework already? Nerd.”

Shiro smiles at him. “Nerd yourself. I heard you talking to Professor Glorax about the research project you want to do on the Mars farming experiments. You know, the research project that isn’t due until the end of the semester?”

“Hey, I never said I wasn’t _also_ a nerd,” Matt points out. “But seriously, what are you working on?”

Shiro sighs. “You know the job I got?”

“The tutoring one, yeah. Did you meet the kid?”

“He’s not really a kid, Matt. I’m pretty sure he’s only a year younger than you.”

“Yeah, but he’s two years behind me in school, and you’re his tutor, so it qualifies. What’s his name?”

“Keith,” Shiro says. “And I have no idea how I’m supposed to help him.”

Matt quirks an eyebrow. “Are you having classroom management issues, Professor Shirogane?”

“No,” Shiro says, too deep in thought to respond to Matt’s teasing. “No, he seems like he’s willing to work with me. He just—I don’t know. I’m not even really an English tutor; I’m a pilot!”

“Hey, you taught me how to use a semicolon!”

“Not really,” says Shiro. “I just told you it’s like a comma squared and you got it, did a dance, and started using them obsessively. But the point is, there are all kinds of things Keith needs to learn. Like—how to organize a paragraph, and how to use transition words. Let alone spelling and grammar.”

“Didn’t they give you a curriculum?” Matt asks.

“Yeah.” Shiro picks up the teacher’s guide from his desk, flips through it. “But it doesn’t seem to have really good explanations of _how_ to, like, structure an essay or whatever. It just gives some examples and then expects you to do it.”

“Well, that’s shit,” Matt says. He grabs the book from Shiro and reads the back cover. “What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know!” Shiro gets up from the desk, pushing in his chair with more force than strictly necessary, and goes to flop on the bed beside Matt. “And it’s not just that, either. Keith—he seems really depressed. And he didn’t even know that he didn’t have to pay for textbooks. It doesn’t seem like he has a good support network.”

“Shit,” Matt says again. Shiro can see him thinking, emotions traveling across his expressive face. Matt doesn’t have a concept of not having a support network—his dad is a professor here at the Garrison, and though Shiro hasn’t seen them interact much, just the way Matt talks about his family makes it abundantly clear that they’re close.

“Who can we tell?” Matt asks finally. “There’s got to be someone, you know, an adult who could help him out.”

Shiro shakes his head. “That’s the thing. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t trust an adult.”

“What?” says Matt. “Why?”

“Because—” Shiro folds his hands behind his head as he lays back. “It’s just a hunch, okay. But it seems like the adults in his life haven’t been that great.”

“Oh.” Matt stares at the floor.

“Don’t worry about it,” Shiro tells him. “I’ll figure it out.”

\----

But two weeks later, he hasn’t figured it out at all. He meets with Keith five days a week, working on things like run-ons and fragments while he tries to figure out how to address more structural problems. He keeps an eye out for Keith in the dining hall, too, but has yet to see him there. And on weekends, Keith seems to disappear entirely.

On the third Tuesday, Shiro’s ten o’clock astronomy class runs late. By the time he gets to the tutoring office at 11:03, Keith is already there, sitting on the floor against the wall with his arms around his knees.

“Sorry I’m late,” Shiro tells him, digging around for the key that unlocks the office. “How’s your day been?”

He twists the key in the lock and turns back to look at Keith. Keith doesn’t meet his eyes and doesn’t reply, just gets up with his face turned away from Shiro.

Shiro holds the door for him. As Keith shuffles into the office, Shiro catches tear tracks on his face.

He shuts the door quickly and sits down across from Keith, who’s already flipping through his textbook.

“How are you?” Shiro asks again.

Keith just shrugs.

Oh no. “Not great, huh.”

“I’m fine,” Keith says, his voice breaking. And then he bursts into tears.

“Hey,” Shiro says, softly. “What’s going on?”

“Fuck,” Keith mutters between sobs. “Fuck. I’m sorry. Fuck.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Shiro tells him. “Tell me what happened, okay? Did you have a problem with the homework I gave you?”

Keith shakes his head. “I,” he starts, and hiccups; Shiro looks around desperately for tissues and doesn’t find any. “I, um. I failed my room inspection.”

Shiro’s brow creases. “That sounds discouraging,” he says. “But it’s not the end of the world, I promise. My friend Matt failed his room inspections six times last semester.”

Keith looks up for a second, almost hopeful, then shakes his head again and goes back to hiding his face. “I got a demerit,” he says. “I can’t—if I get ten demerits, they might not let me come back. That’s what they said. And I already have one and it hasn’t even been a month!”

Shiro takes a deep breath, trying to think of what to say next.

“It’s because I have a history,” Keith explains, his breath still ragged. “Because I got in trouble in my last school. That’s why they’ll kick me out if I get ten.”

“But Keith,” Shiro points out, although he’s not at all sure it’s the right thing to say, “there aren’t ten months in a semester. Even if you get a demerit every month, that’s still only four. And room inspections get easier with time, anyway—you learn what they’re looking for.”

Keith takes a couple deep breaths, drags a sleeve across his eyes. “Yeah, but…what if I do something worse? What if I get in a fight, or say something that I shouldn’t to a teacher? If I get kicked out, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“Hey,” Shiro says again, leaning across the desk a little. “Hey, you’re going to be okay, okay? Listen—it doesn’t sound to me like you want to do those things, getting in fights or talking back to teachers. Right?”

“Yeah,” Keith says, “but sometimes I just—it’s like I can’t help it, like it just comes out of me somehow.” He shakes his head. “I should’ve known it wouldn’t work out.”

“Don’t make up your mind so fast,” Shiro tells him. His thoughts are spinning, but he manages to keep his voice calm; if he’s good at nothing else, at least he’s capable of keeping his head in a crisis. “This is just one bump in the road. If you can get through this first semester, you’ll move from conditionally accepted to a full part of the program. That’s just thirteen more weeks.”

“Yeah,” Keith repeats, “but—”

“Listen, okay,” Shiro says. “There’s something a teacher here told me once, when I was in my first semester. This teacher—his name’s Doc Holt—asked me to come into his office after I didn’t turn in an assignment. I told him I was having a lot of trouble getting started because I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to get it right.”

Keith looks up at him again. Shiro hopes desperately and keeps going.

“So Doc Holt told me this, and it’s helped me ever since. He said, _if you get too worried about what might go wrong, you could miss a chance to do something great_.”

Their eyes meet.

“Can you do that for me?” Shiro asks. “Can you stop thinking all the time about what might go wrong?”

“I—” Keith hesitates. “I can try, yeah.”

After that, Shiro scraps his lesson plan. He digs out some candy that Matt stowed in his backpack, shares it with Keith, and has him talk through what main points he would make for a persuasive essay on why flying is awesome.

\----

_The most awesome thing is flying. I go to school at the Garrison to learn to be a pilot and I like to fly a lot. I don’t get to fly real ships yet but I can fly the simulater. Which is like a real ship because you have to navegate and change your altitude and you can make it go faster and slower._

_Flying is awesome for many resons. One is that you can go any where, even space. Space exploration is cool because we can find out things about sciensce, and maybe even find aliens one day. People are growing plants in space. One of the first ones was an orange flower like in Star Trek. Now there are farms on the moon with things like bananas and rice. Once I ate a banana that grew on the moon._

Shiro sips his coffee and smiles as he reads over Keith’s essay. It’s still rough, for sure, but he can see progress, and he decorates his marginal notes with smiley faces and occasional doodles of stars and planets.

_Reson 2 that flying is awesome is that you can go fast. Just like racing in a car except their is no speed limit so you are not breaking any law. When I fly fast in the simulater I feel happy. It’s like I am to fast for anything bad to catch me._

_The last reason that flying is awesome is that it is still amazing that a person and a maschine can win a fight with gravity. People are a lot more dense than air and metal is more dense than a person, but with technology we can go into the sky and then even space._

_In conclusion flying is awesome because of going fast, beating gravity, and it lets us go to space. I hope to fly real ships one day._

Across the room, Matt is reading out loud, some highly theoretical text on silicon biochemistry that Shiro only half-understands. He sounds excited, though, which is vaguely endearing, so Shiro wads up a piece of scrap paper and spins around, tossing it at his roommate’s head.

“Hey!” Matt protests, scrambling to pick up the wad of paper. He lobs it back at Shiro. “What was that for?”

“Being a nerd,” Shiro says. “Also, I need your congratulations. Keith has learned the essentials of the five-paragraph essay.”

Matt breaks into a grin, no trace of sarcasm behind it, and whoops. “Score one for Professor Shirogane!”

Shiro smiles back, but he shakes his head. “I mean, I’m sure I helped some, but it’s Keith that put all the work in.”

“Score one for Cadet Kogane, too, then,” Matt says. He shuts his textbook, and Shiro thinks about teasing him for having it open at all on a Saturday morning, but—well, he’s grading on a Saturday morning, and that’s not much better.

“Although if you’re both on the same side,” Matt goes on, “who are you trying to beat here? With the points.”

Shiro raises his eyebrows. “Until just now, I wasn’t aware we were getting points. You seem to know more about this than I do.”

“Hmm,” Matt says. “Oh, I know who it is. Iverson.”

“Why Iverson?” Shiro asks.

“Because Dad said Iverson said you couldn’t do it.”

“Couldn’t get Keith to pass the competency exam?”

“Yup,” says Matt. He shakes his head. “I hate Iverson.”

“Well, he might not be wrong,” Shiro points out. “Keith’s still got a long ways to go, and I’m not totally sure how to get him there.”

“Oh, he’s wrong all right,” Matt says. “Iverson is innately wrong. Like, as a human being. It’s his nature. Instinct. Genetics. Something.”

“That’s your expert scientific opinion?”

“Shut up.”

\----

It’s a month and a half into the semester by the time Shiro sees Keith outside of their scheduled meetings. He’s in the commissary during his lunch period, which is a bit unusual—he skips lunch sometimes to catch up on homework, or in favor of filching energy bars from Matt, who has an absurd appetite and therefore an endless supply of snacks. It’s not like Shiro _never_ comes to lunch, though. And he’s never seen Keith there before.

He’d figured Keith just had a different lunch period. And unless Keith is currently skipping class, that’s clearly not the case.

“Excuse me,” Shiro says to the classmates he’s sitting with. “I just saw someone I need to catch so I can ask him a question.”

“Sure,” says Yesenia, with all the politeness that makes her such a coveted comms officer for simulator exercises. “We’ll get your plate, don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks,” says Shiro, grabbing his backpack and turning after Keith, who’s just sat down by himself at the end of a table.

Keith looks up warily when he hears Shiro approaching, but then some of the tension slips away from his face. “Oh, Shiro. Hey.”

“Hey,” Shiro says. He pulls out a chair across from Keith. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. I just never realized we had the same lunch period.”

“Oh,” says Keith. “Yeah. Sometimes I just go back to my room.”

“Me too,” Shiro says. “I like my roommate, but he’s not there during my lunch period, and the quiet is nice.”

“Yeah.” Keith squints at him, as though trying to figure out a game Shiro isn’t even sure he’s playing. “My roommate is kind of stupid.”

Shiro laughs. “Happens to the best of us,” he says. “But hey, you don’t have to be best friends with your roommate. You can always find other people.”

Keith shrugs, spearing some wilted-looking broccoli and cramming it into his mouth.

Shiro hesitates, assesses. “It can be hard, though,” he says. “Making friends in a new school.”

Keith shrugs again. He takes a long drink of water, then meets Shiro’s eyes. “It’s whatever,” he says. “I’m used to it. Foster kid, you know?”

Shiro feels a rush of emotions battering his composure, but he fights back. Keith is his _student_. “I was in foster care for a while, too,” he says, and somehow his voice comes out steady. “Makes things hard, huh?”

“Yeah,” Keith says. He looks back at his plate.

“How’s your current family?” Shiro asks. “Did they help you with the application process here?”

“Not really,” says Keith. “But since there wasn’t tuition, they figured it was fine.”

Suddenly everything clicks in Shiro’s head. There’s no tuition or materials cost at the Garrison, since it’s government-funded. But meals are separate, and students can choose plans of more or fewer meals at different costs. Shiro has a scholarship to cover his full meal plan, but could Keith get a scholarship when he’s on conditional acceptance?

Shiro makes a mental note to steal a whole box of Matt’s energy bars to keep in his office.

\----

“What?” Matt yells.

“Calm down, okay,” Shiro says, although he himself is anything but calm. “I just need—”

“Calm _down_?” Matt throws his hands in the air and starts pacing every last inch of their limited floor space. “Oh, sure, calm down. There’s a middle-school kid here who doesn’t have enough to eat and you’re going to try to fix that by giving him energy bars while you tutor him so he can stay in school at all, that’s fine, or maybe actually it’s _not fine at all,_ Shiro, what the _fuck_!”

Shiro sighs. “Look,” he says. “I’m angry about it too. But I can’t think of anything else to do. You can’t change your meal plan halfway through the semester, and buying extra meals individually is ridiculously expensive.”

“Have you considered, you know, _notifying the government of child neglect?_ Or at least the school authorities?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Shiro admits. “But if Keith’s guardianship gets transferred, he may have to withdraw from the Garrison. And there’s no guarantee that the next placement would be any better.”

Matt stops pacing. Stares at him.

“I’m in the system too, remember,” Shiro says. “Believe me, Matt—reporting won’t necessarily fix the problem, and it could make things worse. But if we can get Keith through this semester, he can apply for scholarships next year.”

“Oh, next year,” Matt says bitterly. “Shiro, this school has enough funding that they’re planning a manned trip to _Kerberos_ in a few years. They can sure as hell afford to give Keith a fucking meal plan before next fucking year!”

“Yeah,” says Shiro. Suddenly he feels very tired. “I just don’t know how to make that happen.”

“Oh,” says Matt, and his eyes are starting to shine. “I can think of a few ways.”

\----

_Alternative A:  
Hack the system and change Keith’s meal plan to unlimited._

_Obstacles to Alternative A:_  
_1\. Could be discovered and changed back (data research: how much attention do they pay to this shit??)_  
 _2\. Keith might not know it happened?? (field research: does Keith check his meal balance)_  
 _3\. Keith could be offended and think it’s charity (field research: teach Keith what friends are for)_

_Alternative B:  
Raise the school-wide issue of meal access. Mobilize student body to speak out about concerns._

_Obstacles to Alternative B:_  
_1\. This is a military school and I’m pretty sure the handbook has a code against protests (data research: where are the loopholes)_  
 _2\. Could take a long time. This is urgent (data / field research: what is Keith’s current meal plan?)_  
 _3\. What if nobody else gives a fuck (field research: maybe some kind of poll???)_

_Alternative C:  
Hack the system and change everyone’s meal plans to unlimited. When the school notices, send untraceable warning that they must conform to demands or prepare for shit to go down._

_Obstacles to Alternative C:_  
_1\. Highly illegal_  
 _2\. Highly illegal_  
 _3\. Highly illegal_

_Alternative D:  
Keep Keith supplied with energy bars and make sure he gets a scholarship next year._

_Obstacles to Alternative D:_  
_1\. Doesn’t address the systemic issue_  
 _2\. Energy bars are gross if you eat too many (data research: nutrients in energy bars)_  
 _3\. Just no, Shiro_  
 _4\. No_

_Alternative E:  
Route our concerns about the meal plans through a faculty member, who can address the board more easily._

_Obstacles to Alternative E:_  
_1\. Could take a long time_  
 _2\. A very long time_  
 _3\. A very, very long time_

_Alternative F:  
Combine methods._

_Obstacles to Alternative F:  
1\. Lots probably but I think it’s our best shot _

 

\----

When the bell rings, Shiro starts gathering up his books and zipping his backpack. But as he heads out of the classroom, Doc Holt calls his name.

“Hi, Doc Holt,” Shiro says, turning around. “Do you need something?”

“Yes, actually,” Doc Holt says, with an amused half-smile, and Shiro feels a rush of nervousness. “How’s Matt?”

“Matt’s—fine,” Shiro says. “Still going on about silicon biochemistry, building Lego models of molecules. The usual.”

“Huh.” Doc Holt tilts his head. “Is he going to the commissary? He texted me last night asking for money to buy more energy bars, and I’m pretty sure he just got three boxes of them last week.”

Shiro can feel himself starting to blush. “I’m not sure, Doc,” he says. “We don’t have the same lunch period.”

“Huh,” says Doc Holt again. “Well, I wouldn’t be worried if it were just that, you know.” He glances towards the door and lowers his voice a bit, though no one else is in the room or the hall. “You tutor a student named Keith Kogane, right?”

Shiro nods.

“Well, just today I caught a report of a clerical error in the commissary filing system. Keith’s meal plan seems to have been altered from the twelve-a-week plan he was on earlier this semester.”

Doc Holt pauses. Shiro doesn’t say anything.

“Shiro.”

“Yes, Doc?”

“I can put the pieces together. Most of the students with twelve-a-week plans are upperclassmen who live in dorms that are equipped with kitchens. Keith is neither an upperclassman nor living in a full-kitchen dorm.”

Shiro swallows really hard. “Sir, we—”

“I know.” Doc Holt smiles at him then. “Listen, I’m going to talk to the board of directors. I think that, at the very least, that loophole that let Keith choose the twelve-a-week needs to be closed. A lot more than that needs to be done, of course, but as a starting point…”

“Sir,” Shiro says again. “Keith—he can’t afford a better meal plan.”

“I’ll work on it,” Doc Holt promises. “Just tell Matt not to give the cashiers down at the store the impression that he’s storing up for some kind of apocalypse.”

Shiro smiles. “Okay,” he says. “I can do that.”

\----

Even though Matt assures him that the so-called clerical error in the filing system hasn’t yet been fixed, Shiro doesn’t see Keith in the dining hall more often than before. Matt even got into the school’s automated response email address and sent Keith a notification about the change, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.

Keith still comes to tutoring, at least. Shiro’s started eating an energy bar himself every session, as an excuse to offer Keith one. It usually works—even if Keith doesn’t eat it right away, he’ll at least slip it into his backpack. Shiro tries to tell himself that he’s doing something, at least, but it doesn’t feel like enough.

It’s week nine of the semester by now, and according to the curriculum it’s time to focus on proper use of contractions. The curriculum gives a bunch of worksheets, but Shiro’s been doing some research on other methods. And besides, he’s fucking sick of worksheets, so he’s pretty sure Keith is too. So he finds a magazine article that uses contractions and draws up a plan.

“I know you don’t usually like to read,” he says, as Keith sits down across from him. “But I found this magazine the other day, and it’s got an interview with some of the early Mars pilots.”

Keith almost smiles. “That’s cool.”

“It’s a really good one,” Shiro says. “I read it last night. We’ve got to talk about contractions today, but the only homework I’m going to give you is to read the interview, then write down which part is most interesting to you and why. We’ll look at other things in it later.”

“Okay,” Keith says. He takes the magazine when Shiro passes it over, flips to the marked page, and looks at it a bit. While he does, Shiro casually pulls out two energy bars. He unwraps one for himself and slides the other across to Keith.

Keith glances up at the motion. “Look,” he says, and his voice is tired but not defensive. “I know what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?” Shiro asks.

“You think I’m not eating enough or something.”

Shiro holds his hands up in surrender. “Hey, when I was fourteen I was hungry whether I ate enough or not. Growth spurts, right?”

Keith lifts his eyebrows. “Sure,” he says. “Whatever. Just so you know, you’re terrible at hiding things.”

Shiro lifts his eyebrows right back. “Guess I’ll have to work on that then. And you can work at actually showing up to the dining hall.”

“Why the hell do you care?” Keith asks. There’s still no fight in his tone. He just sounds weary and beaten-down, and that almost scares Shiro more. “I’m just—teaching me shit is your job. You want to get me to pass so you can put it on your resume, I get it. But nobody’s paying you to be _nice_ to me.”

“They don’t have to,” Shiro says. “Keith—I’m helping you because I want to. Because I know a little bit about what it’s like, what you’re dealing with. I think I told you before that I was in the foster system too, and it wasn’t always great. I ended up with a good family and they’re still my guardians, but I’ve had the people who wouldn’t spend a penny more than what they got in reimbursements, and I’ve had the people who were nice enough but always favored their own kids. I’ve done group homes, too. I know I don’t know much about your specific situation, but some of it I get.”

Keith looks down at his feet, and Shiro bites his lip, wondering if he’s said too much. Keith is his student, after all. He’s not here to learn the details of Shiro’s life.

“Uh,” says Keith, after a minute. “Um, did you—did you ever know that your family was doing things they shouldn’t, but you didn’t tell your social worker because you didn’t want to move again or go back in the group home or, or you know, maybe end up somewhere worse?”

Shiro swallows. “Yes,” he says. “Once.”

“What happened?”

“Well, for me the social worker found out anyway,” Shiro says. “And looking back, I’m glad. But it was really hard.”

“Yeah.” Keith sighs. “I just don’t want to go back for summer. You know? I wish I could just stay here all year. They probably wouldn’t even notice if I didn’t go back.”

“Keith,” Shiro says. “Are they hurting you?”

“No!” Keith looks up, his face guarded again for a moment, and then it melts away. “Not—not the parents.”

“The other kids.”

“Yeah.” Keith’s voice is so quiet Shiro can barely catch it.

“Do the parents know?”

“Yeah.” Keith toys with the magazine in his lap. “I talked to them about it once and they told me, like, roughhousing is normal for boys, that sort of thing. But he’s seventeen and he’s a lot bigger than me.”

Shiro swallows again. Oh God, Keith is his student and that means Shiro is the teacher who’s supposed to fix this, but he doesn’t know how.

“I just,” Keith goes on, “I just don’t want to move because I have to have permission from my guardians to be here, and I’m worried that—like it doesn’t make sense that someone would say no but a lot of things happen that don’t make sense.”

“Yeah,” Shiro says. “I know.”

“And this is—flying is the only thing I’m good at and if I can’t come here I have to go back and do high school and pass even more English classes, and this is all I’ve wanted for a long time, to be a pilot, and I’m—” He hesitates. “I’m scared.”

The deep pain inside Shiro is starting to harden. Anger and determination build in his spine. “Listen,” he says. “If you don’t want to change placements but you don’t want to go back in the summer, we’ll see what we can do. You might have to check in with your social worker, but maybe you can stay with me for a while. My family’s great. Or maybe you can get a summer job and not have to be around the house so much. We can make it work, Keith, okay? And you’re doing great with English; you’re learning a ton. We can get through this. We’re going to get through it. Okay?”

“Okay,” Keith says. “Okay.”

Shiro nudges the energy bar towards him again. Keith picks it up reverently, like he’s holding Shiro’s promise in his hands.

\----

_I started hating ELA classes in third grade. My teacher that year was Ms. Carson. She made everything feel really hard, and I didn’t understand. A lot of the grade was spelling and I wasn’t good at it. My next teacher was better but I had already decided that English was hard and I couldn’t do it. When you feel like you can’t do something, it’s harder to actually do it._

_This year was better in several ways. First, my teacher beleived in me. He made sure to tell me when I did something right. He listened when I said I didn’t understand and was very patient. I am glad I had class with Shiro because he told me it was okay not to be perfect the first time._

_Another reason this year was better is because I was the only student. Sometimes it’s good to be in a bigger class but when you work one-on-one the teacher can listen to what you need and spend more time on things that are confusing. This was very helpful. Also, when you are the only one you can’t compare yourself to the smart kids in the class. You are the dumbest student but also the smartest all at the same time. That makes it easier because sometimes I feel nervous about being wrong in front of smarter people._

_The third reason is that I had lots of motivation to pass. If I do not pass I will not be able to stay at the Garrison. Because of this I have worked very hard and saw myself learn things. Being at the Garrison is very important to me._

_Next week I take the test to see if I pass. They will also look at this essay as part of deciding. I hope that I will do well. If not, I can know I did my best. That is what is important. In this class, I learned alot about English but I also learned to work hard and be confidant. It was a very good class for me._

\----

Shiro’s packing to leave for the summer when there’s a knock at his door. “Just a second,” he calls, setting down the stack of books he was transferring off his shelf.

When he opens the door, Keith is there, beaming at him.

“Shiro,” he says, “Shiro, I passed!”

And Shiro tears up. Whatever else there is that he can’t do for Keith, whatever else may be wrong—this is okay. Keith is coming back in the fall.

“I’m proud of you,” Shiro says. “I knew you could do it.”

Keith throws his arms around Shiro and Shiro holds him. He wraps one arm around Keith’s trembling shoulders, using the other hand to pull his head close. “I knew you could,” he says again. “I knew it.”

“I talked to my social worker, too,” Keith says into Shiro’s shoulder. “She said I have to go back for a while, but as long as my guardians are okay with it, I can go visit you. Maybe for a couple weeks, even. If that’s okay.”

“I’ve already asked my parents,” Shiro tells him. “They’re excited to have you come. Almost as excited as me.”

“And me,” Keith says. He pulls out of the hug, looking a bit awkward about it. “You’re sure it’s okay?”

“It is infinitely okay.”

“Okay,” says Keith. “I’ll let you know when I can come.”

“Cool. And you’ve got my number?”

“Yeah.”

“Use it any time.”

“Thanks.”

Shiro, smiling, still teary, looks Keith over. He’s still thin, his hair a little too long for regulation. But he’s not hunching into himself like he used to. Instead, he’s standing tall with his shoulders back, and the smile on his face is a light.

“I, uh,” Keith says. “I wanted to say thanks. I mean I know I just said thanks for what you just said about calling you, and the other day I said thanks for how much I learned, but I wanted—this whole semester, I—”

“You don’t have to say it,” Shiro says. “I’m just glad I could be there.”

“No,” Keith insists. “I want to. The Garrison gave me a conditional acceptance, right, and now I’m finally all the way in and I don’t have to worry about that. But you didn’t act like I was conditional. You just—you—”

“I’ll always accept you,” Shiro says, when Keith trails off. “That’s what friends are for.”

“Yeah,” says Keith, moving in to hug Shiro again. “I learned that, too.”


End file.
